


and my guts and my bones, achin' I know

by Pomfry



Category: Naruto
Genre: All aboard!, Alternate Universe - Canon, Arashi is powerless to resist, Crack Treated Seriously, Everyone Needs A Hug, Fluff and Angst, Kakashi is a wreck and needs a hug, Light Angst, M/M, Naruto is a Ray of Sunshine, genma is very pretty and arashi is Weak, i dont even know what this is, we're on our way to fuck up a town called danzo's plans
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-11
Updated: 2018-10-11
Packaged: 2019-07-29 09:13:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16261160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pomfry/pseuds/Pomfry
Summary: Arashi doesn't ask for much. He simply wants a family again. And if he has to kill an elder, has to stage a coup to get it, so be it. He just wants to be recognized as himself. Not Munashi, the nervous shinobi. Not Tiger, the ruthless ANBU. Just...Arashi. Minato's younger brother.Arashi just wants a family. And he's going to tear down the world to get it.





	and my guts and my bones, achin' I know

**Author's Note:**

> SO I blame this on the discord. we were talking about arashi - which was apparently minato's name before his name was introduced - and it became an au where arashi was a separate person - minato's younger brother, to be precise - and I ended up writing it. Another person in the discord, Sharky, is writing something similar to it, but it's going to turn out way differently than mine!
> 
> anyways, I hope you enjoy my self indulgent thing!

Arashi has to wear a henge when he's out and about. It's annoying as hell, he'll admit, but he doesn't want to be forced into wearing the damn hat. That hat is what got his brother killed, is what got Minato's son left alone.  
  
He huffs, flipping his hair out of his eyes. It's about time for him to head into ANBU, but he really doesn't want to. Danzo has been eyeing him for a bit now, and Arashi had listened to his brother rant about the guy enough to know that he isn't good news.  
  
"Hey!" calls a voice, and Arashi stops in place, turning. Genma walks up to him, senbon in place, and Arashi smiles half-heartedly. Genma was one of his brother's friends. Genma was told Arashi died the night of the Kyuubi attack. Genma...Genma is still mourning. Still, Arashi can't do anything about it. The Hokage ordered Arashi to be unrecognizable, and Arashi is a shinobi of Konoha. He has to follow the Hokage's orders, no matter how dumb he may find them.  
  
"Genma-san," he acknowledges, and Genma gives him a wry smile that makes Arashi's heart skip a beat. See, Arashi has always had this embarrassing crush on the guy, even if they never really knew each other that well. It's stupid, he knows, but —  
  
But Genma is so pretty, so deadly, that Arashi finds he can't resist.  
  
"What are you doing?" Genma asks, and Arashi shrugs.  
  
"Just going to get a mission," he says softly, and Genma laughs, swings an arm around his shoulders.  
  
"I'll come with you!" he says cheerfully, and Arashi forces down the blush with the expertise born of experience.  
  
"You don't have to do that — " he begins, and Genma rolls his eyes.

"I'm doing it because I want to," he interrupts, and pulls Arashi closer. "I get that you have problems with self worth and all, but believe me when I say that I like you."  
  
Arashi wants to scream. He wants to shout that this persona, this person —  it isn't real. It's all a front. He wants to tear it down and go get his nephew, go get Kakashi and hold them close but —  
  
But he was ordered to never associate himself with them. Ordered to never reveal his identity. And Arashi... Arashi has to obey.  
  
"Okay," he murmurs, and takes a step forward, Genma at his side. It's not the way Arashi wanted him to be, but then, nothing he wanted has mattered since two years ago. His brother and Kushina were the only ones who cared.  
  
Genma cares for a _fake._ Kakashi thinks him dead. And Naruto...Naruto doesn't even know he has an uncle.  
  
Arashi hates a lot of things, lately. He hates ANBU, he hates how he has to hide. He hates how the Hokage ordered him to stay away from everyone he ever considered family.  
  
Minato would be disappointed in him, Arashi knows. He would be disappointed but —  
  
But Arashi doesn't have anything to live for, not really. So why should he care what his dead older brother would have thought?  
  
Genma sighs in quiet exasperation. "You're thinking dark thoughts again, aren't you?"  
  
Arashi blinks. "No?"  
  
Genma clearly doesn't believe him. "You need to stay at my house again?"  
  
_"No."_  
  
Genma tightens his grip. "I've lost a lot of people," he murmurs. "Can't lose another."  
  
Arashi's heart seizes in his chest. "I —  I know. It's just — "  
  
Genma smiles, a bit bitter, a bit dry. "You're staying at my place."

Arashi shakes his head, taking a quiet step to the side. Genma’s arm slides away, his fingers lingering on his arm before he takes a step back as well. “I —  I have to meet with the Hokage,” he says, closing his eyes to mere slits and smiling. His hands are folded behind him in parade rest, his head tilted slightly to the side in the habit he’s never managed to shake. Genma’s eyes widen and Arashi curses himself silently. Genma knows his habits because Minato had them as well. Arashi learned them from his brother, after all, and nobody has them the exact same way. Arashi has his own spin on it —  he puts his hands behind his back, body stiff, whereas his brother would have been loose, with his arms dangling at his sides and his smile easy. Not at all like Arashi, who was teased by Kushina more than once that he was like a robot, like a machine. He’s stiff, with tense muscles born from paranoia. Genma likes to complain about it and drag him to the spa so his muscles can relax, but Arashi has been like this for as long as he can remember. There’s no point in changing it now, when he’s eighteen and going to die before he’s thirty with no one to remember him.

“Minato,” Genma whispers, and Arashi smiles thinly as he’s dragged out of his thoughts.

“I’m afraid I don’t know who that is,” he replies, and turns on his heel, ready to walk away. Genma grabs his wrist before he can leave, the morning crowd milling around them. Arashi turns, ready to scold him, but Genma has his head down, his arm shaking, and the words die on his lips. “Genma-san?”

“Minato is — he was one of the greatest men I ever knew,” Genma says, and it’s quiet and mournful. Arashi curls his toes in. Minato was loyal and kind and everything Arashi never was, warm and welcoming where Arashi was cold and odd. But Minato never left him, no matter what, and Arashi wants to say that he knows exactly who Minato was, knows everything about him because Minato was his _brother,_ was his everything, but he can’t. So he tilts his head again in faux confusion.

“Is he gone?” he asks, and it kills him to see the way Genma shakes and shakes. “Genma-san?”

“Yeah,” Genma manages. “On October tenth.”

It wasn’t Naruto’s fault. It wasn’t, Arashi knows, because he had a sealing genius for a brother and an Uzumaki as a step-sister. It wasn’t Naruto’s fault and sometimes it seems like he’s the only one who understands that.

“The Kyuubi Night,” he says, and Genma nods. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

Genma shakes his head. “Nah, I didn’t — didn’t know him that well. But he was...amazing.” He raises his head, the sunlight turning his eyes aflame, and Arashi’s heart turns over in his chest. “You just...looked like him, for a second.”

Arashi licks his lips. Of course Genma wouldn’t remember him, Minato’s silent shadow. They rarely spoke, only saw each other when Minato was in the room with them. Of course Genma wouldn’t remember his little habits. Nobody really got close enough for that beyond Minato and Kushina and Kakashi. Still, it hurts to see that he was so easily forgotten.

(Sometimes, late at night when he’s staring at the ceiling with more blood on his hands and red flaking beneath his fingernails, he thinks that Minato was the fire, burning and bright and drawing others to him like a moth to a flame. Arashi was just another person caught in his orbit.

Sometimes, he thinks that he would rather die than be here, with stale air rattling in his lungs and nobody to call him by his name or wake him up with a smile. Sometimes, he thinks his sun is gone and Arashi will shrivel up and die without it.

Sometimes —

Ah, but Arashi is merely a tool for the Hokage, for the village to use. He’s merely a tool amongst hundreds, and he isn’t much in the grand scheme of things. He’s not special, not like Minato was. He’s just a tool and he knows that. So he turns on his side, closing his eyes with his fingers curled around the kunai underneath his pillow, and he dreams of fire and death and a blade in his stomach. Those dreams are peaceful and he’s almost disappointed when he wakes up.)

“I see,” he says, still smiling pleasantly, and tugs his wrist out Genma’s grasp. His mind screams that he should stay here, should let the chakra around him fade away so there’s only lemon hair and blue eyes and a sad gaze, but he has his orders. “I’m still sorry for your loss. I...lost several people in the attack as well.”

He lost Minato and Kushina, and he might as well have lost Kakashi and Naruto. He’s alone, in an empty house that was filled with laughter and the sound of Minato and Kushina talking. He’s alone with a house filled with ghosts, but he can’t make himself move out. The pictures on the walls are the only things remaining of his family, of his brother, and he can’t make himself lose it as well.

He’s lost so much already. He can’t make himself lose that as well.

“Munashi,” comes a voice, and Arashi turns, two years of using that name making him do it. “The Hokage can see you now.”

Genma doesn’t say a word when he walks away. He doesn’t know why it hurts, and he tugs on his bangs in mild frustration. Genma is quite possibly his only friend in this entire village. Kakashi is — was — a friend. He’s not, now. He’s more of a stranger because he doesn’t know Munashi. He just...he thinks he’s alone. And for someone like Kakashi, who has lost everything in his life one after the other with him unable to do anything about it, that’s the worst thing that could happen to him.

The Hokage is sitting behind his desk when Arashi walks in and shuts the door behind him. He lets his henge fade away, fully aware that there's nobody else here but them. Sarutobi doesn't look up from his work, pipe sticking out of his mouth as he writes something down, and Arashi has to fight down the irrational surge of anger at the sight of him behind that desk. Minato should be behind there, hat on the desk and coat folded on the back of the chair with his hair turning golden in the sunlight. Minato should be here with his son on his desk, playing with him instead of doing paperwork like Arashi _knew_ he would have if he had lived.

Not for the first time, Arashi tastes ash and blood on his tongue, and he carefully doesn't reach for a kunai. Sarutobi is doing everything _wrong._ Arashi is just as much as a genius as his older brother was, and he can see that the way Sarutobi is doing things is _wrong._ He's undoing everything Minato tried to do and —

Arashi takes a breath, forces a smile. "Sandaime," he says respectfully, and he doesn't lower his head. The only Hokage he will follow is his brother, and Minato is dead. Sarutobi might as well be an imposter.

"Arashi," Sarutobi replies, and sets down his pen. "I see Genma ambushed you again."

Arashi grits his teeth. "Yeah."

"You can't let him know."

"Yes, Sandaime."

Sarutobi sighs. It's exhausted and weary and Arashi would be sympathetic towards him, would ask if he's tired, but —

But Kakashi is in ANBU when he all but throws himself onto the enemy's blade and Naruto is alone. Arashi doesn't have sympathy a lot to spare.

“How are things with Naruto?” Arashi asks hesitantly, unsure if he should but doing it anyway. He needs news on his nephew, needs to know he’s okay. “Are his caretakers doing their jobs? I know that they have a grudge against him.” Which is stupid, but. They’re civilians.

If Arashi ever finds out who leaked the news that Naruto was the jinchuuriki, he’s going to gut them. His nephew is growing up with nobody to love him, no one to care for him and — 

Sarutobi rubs at his temples. “Things are not good. They leave him be for hours a day.”

Arashi is across the room in a second, slamming in his hands down on the desk and rustling the papers. _”What?_ Sandaime, why won’t you just remove him from their custody? You’d have grounds to do it — that’s against the law put in by the Shodaime!”

“And what would I do with him after that?” Sarutobi snaps back, his chakra rising at the challenge. Arashi doesn’t even flinch.

“Give him to _me!_ Munashi is a shinobi known for taking low level mission involving children because he has a soft spot for them. He has no known connection to the Yondaime or the previous jinchuuriki and no grudge against him. He’s literally perfect for the job, Sandaime!”

“And what if your henge stops?” Sarutobi asks, but there’s a glint in his eyes that says he knows what his answer will be, and Arashi doesn’t disappoint.

“Has it _ever_ dropped in these two years?”

Sarutobi’s lips lift into a small smirk, and Arashi squints, feeling like he just walked into a trap. “No, it hasn’t.”

“So does that mean I get to take him?”

“Give me a few hours, and you’ll know.” Sarutobi waves a hand. “Now, go to ANBU. Danzo should have a new mission for you.”

Arashi grimaces but puts the henge up anyway, disappearing from the room. His heart is in his throat, a grin threatening to break out — he may be able to take his nephew _home._

He reaches the ANBU quarters in record time, and he breezes through the dorms with a slight spring in his step. His long hair swings behind him and several people try to grab it. Arashi spins out of their way, sending a couple senbon near their ears. They don’t even stop, just huff a laugh, and Arashi smiles slightly as he grabs his uniform and mask from his bed and marches towards the changing area.

There’s still blood on his mask from his last mission, and he sits down with a wet rag, scrubbing it off with a steady hand, humming a song he hasn’t heard since Minato died. People stop and stare and Arashi pays them no mind, working on getting every centimeter of red off of white.

“Is that...Tiger?” someone whispers. “He’s so...happy.”

“Yeah, it’s kinda weird to look at,” another agrees. “It’s like seeing a completely different person.”

He finally gets that last bit of blood off, stands, and begins to change, brushing brown hair out of his eyes. He should really just dye his hair, but getting rid of his yellow hair when it’s the only reminder of his brother — he just can’t do it. He may have to, when he takes in Naruto, but — 

But he will do it. Anything to take care of his nephew.

He slips the chest plate on, pulls on the gloves, and pulls his hair into a tight pun, pinning it with senbon. He dips more senbon into a poison, puts those in his belt, clips his sword on his back, and just like that he’s not Arashi anymore. He’s Tiger, one of the most deadly ANBU in the unit.

He has to wonder if he’s ever been Arashi since his brother died, since he started going by Munashi. Probably not. He wonders if he can ever be Arashi again.

Probably not.

ROOT agents are milling around, emotionless as always, and Tiger avoids them, stepping out of their way with the grace similar to his namesake. Dog is there, with his silver hair and single red eye. Tiger knows it’s Kakashi, knows it like he knows his real name is Arashi and he was Minato’s little brother, but in ANBU it’s rude to call someone by their real name. So he steadies himself, taps Dog on the shoulder.

Dog whirls around, kunai coming up, but he stops just short of hitting Tiger’s mask. “Tiger?”

“Dog,” Tiger replies. “Don’t you and me have a mission today?”

Dog blinks, a little confused, and he glances back at Cat. Cat nods and Dog shrugs, putting the kunai back in his pocket. “Whatever. Just don’t sneak up on me.”

Tiger nods placidly as they walk up to Danzo. “Of course.”

“Danzo-sama,” Dog says, kneeling. Tiger doesn’t do it, rebelliously looking the elder right in the eyes. Danzo twitches, staring down at him, but Tiger is too valuable to get rid off. He’s their best assassin and personally protected by the Hokage. He’s practically untouchable unless he gets into ROOT. Which he doesn’t want.

“Tiger, Dog.” Danzo rises from his seat, a scroll held in his wrinkled hand. He hands it to Tiger, who unrolls it and reads it through quickly. He whistles lowly, darkly.

“I don’t see the Hokage’s signature on this. Really, getting rid of an entire orphanage? Isn’t that just a bit excessive?” He grins beneath his mask. “Or are you doing something behind his back?"

“The Hokage’s signature is right there.” Danzo places a crooked finger onto the paper, and Tiger shakes his head.

“That’s a forgery. Try a bit harder next time, will you?” He hands the scroll back. “I’m not killing a bunch of kids just so you can get off of on it, old man. Now give me my real mission."

Danzo visibly doesn’t tear Tiger’s arm out of his torso and hands him another scroll. Tiger casts an eye over it, and nods, rolling it back up. “Thank you, dearest elder. Now, I have a mission to get to.”

“You know the offer to join ROOT still stands,” Danzo says, and Tiger stops dead.

“I would rather be tortured than join ROOT,” he says coldly, and leaves the room to complete silence, Dog still kneeling on the floor.

Time to go steal an artifact, he thinks as he adds more chakra to his henge. It’s not killing someone, at least. Just need to steal something. Easy, and he’ll be back within two days.

Dog comes up to his side and Tiger doesn’t even look at him. “That was dangerous,” he says softly, and Tiger snorts.

“He can’t do anything. The Hokage doesn’t want me joining ROOT, I don’t me joining ROOT — he can’t do anything without doing outright treason. And we all know how well that’ll turn out.”

“The Hokage will lock him up?” Cat asks, and Tiger doesn’t even flinch.

“Nope, but it will set him back a few months, and those months are all I need to get out of here.” Tiger shrugs, slipping the scroll into his pocket. “But, we’re going to be late. Come on. If we hurry, we can get back here before Thursday.”

“Why would you want to leave ANBU?” Cat asks as they leave the village, sounding genuinely confused. Tiger laughs, short and harsh.

“ANBU is hell,” he says cheerfully, and vanishes into the trees, too fast for them to see. “Now come on, slowpokes! I have things I wanna do!”

Cat tilts his head and leaps after him, leaving Dog alone on the ground, thinking. That attitude, that stiff shrug...it all reminds him of —

“Come on!”

Dog shrugs himself, disappearing into the trees himself. Surely, it can’t be him.

Arashi died on the night of Kyuubi Attack, after all. The same night Kakashi lost _everything,_ Arashi lost his life. Kakashi isn’t sure which is worse; living, or dying.

He hasn’t been sure since he came home to his father lying in a pool of his own blood, a sword in his stomach.

“Dog! Come on, I’m not waiting for you!”

“Coming!” he calls back, and within moments they’re all running. Still, something lingers, tugs at the back of his mind. Tiger talks similarly to Arashi, walks similarly, laughs similarly.

It’s almost like they’re the same person.

Dog glances at Tiger, then mentally puts it away, just like he has every other time. He’ll investigate it later. Hopefully. For now, he has a mission. And Dog doesn’t fail a mission. After all, the last time he did — 

He doesn’t like to think about the last time he failed a mission.

Tiger nudges nudges Dog’s shoulder. A wordless _you okay?_

Dog nods, because what else can he say? When you’re in ANBU, you’re never okay. And Dog —  and Kakashi — he hasn’t been okay for years now. So he nods and Tiger retreats and — 

And he can’t help but feel vaguely disappointed as they travel towards a daimyo’s palace, the long silent minutes dragging at his brain. It’s not their daimyo, obviously, but it’s a wealthy one nonetheless, and thus they have been instructed to steal some goblet and a crown the daimyo wore when he was a boy.

They stop just outside the palace just as the sun goes down, making sure to stick to the trees.

“We’re here,” Tiger says. And so the mission begins.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are always loved and brighten up my day and are saved in my Gmail.


End file.
